Women who can move and women who cannot

The impact of Demand on the migration and trafficking of women and girls

Good afternoon. My name is Ruchira Gupta and I bring greetings from the ten thousand trafficked women and girls who are members of Apne Aap Women Worldwide in India. It is a pleasure to be here today, and I appreciate the attention that the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women and the Philippine Department of Labour and Employment is devoting to the intersectionality of gender, migration and development.

At the outset I would like to thank Prof. Aurora J. De Dios and UNICEF for enabling my participation at this conference. I would also like to acknowledge Dr Jean D’Cunha from UNIFEM, Ms Ndioro Ndiaye from the International Organization of Migration, Dr Dorchen Leidholdt from the Centre for Battered Women’s Legal Services, Sanctuary for Women and Ms Jean Enriquez from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Asia Pacific, who have over the years taught me to understand and deal with this issue nationally and internationally.

In the course of my work in the last 24 years, I have interacted with thousands of women and girls trafficked for prostitution and cheap labour in India and Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Kosovo and US.  I first came to the Philippines in 1996 to interview Sara Balabagan, a young migrant woman, who had been abused as a domestic worker, retaliated, was jailed, repatriated to her country-Philippines and is still fighting for her rights to compensation for the harms done to her. There are millions of girls and women like her-those who migrated and were exploited and those who were trafficked.

A conspicuous similarity in the migration and trafficking of women is the discrimination, violence and exploitation that women face in both situations. The difference is that trafficking is for the specific purpose of exploitation whereas migration is for better life opportunities. Women can and are exploited post migration but the specific purpose of their movement is not sexual or labour exploitation. This is why trafficked women and girls are always exploited sexually and economically whereas migrant women may or may not be exploited.

One of the primary factors that influence the discrimination that migrant women face is the nature of Demand. Demand includes all those who benefit directly and indirectly from trafficking and the migration of women. It ranges from end users of those in domestic servitude and child labour to buyers of prostituted sex and those who make a profit from trading in women and girls. The nexus between the Buyer and the Business forms the Demand.

Demand is often gendered.  Businesses and end-users often demand women for domestic work (cooking, cleaning, child-minding), sweat shops ( tailors, garment workers), construction work ( stone work, porters), entertainment industry ( bar-girls, lap-dancers) and para-medical work (nurses, assistants) etc. The wages are always less in these jobs than for men who will be recruited for example as drivers, electrical workers, engineers, supervisors and doctors. The other fuel for gendered demand is the provision of less expensive working conditions for women compared to men. They are often given a space in the employer’s home and are therefore more vulnerable to various kinds of exploitation ranging from time dominance, to physical beatings to sexual exploitation. The demand for child workers is also fuelled by the same reasons.

In a survey conducted by Bachpan Bacaho Andolan in 2007 among employers of girl children in Delhi the primary reasons given were a) girls are more amenable b) they cost less c) they can cook and clean d) they will not attack us. These end users create the demand which then influences recruiters and the businesses which profit from the migration industry. They, in turn go to villages recruiting more girls than men. The same is true for industrial sector that drive the demand for migrant women-example the demand for domestic workers in the Gulf or construction workers in Delhi and Mumbai.

In the case of trafficking, of course, the demand ranges from prostitute users to the sex-entrepreneurs (traffickers, transporters, financers, abettors, procurers, pimps, brothel owners, managers, money lenders)-all those who make a profit from the sex industry. The National Human Rights Commission of India had conducted a study in 2006 on the nature of trafficking in India and had pinpointed Demand as one of the major causes for trafficking. The study stated that the majority of trafficker (58.1 %) supplied girls on demand. The greater the demand, the more they supplied. They said the demand varied according to season, going up during festivals and holidays. They also said the demand for young girls was higher than adult women, fair skinned and voluptuous girls higher than for dark skinned and thin girls and submissiveness was also a factor.

The traffickers also claimed that they selected supply areas or source areas based on poor law-enforcement and where they could remain anonymous. Poverty, isolation, caste-factors, lack of employment, low status of women were other indicators they looked at to choose source areas. They said their modus operandi was to offer jobs in big cities, marriage, and money to the family, pilgrimages, coercion, force, trickery, seduction and of course outright kidnapping or purchase. In some cases caste was used as a means of coercion. In a village in Bihar, Apne Aap had organized a group of women to develop the self-confidence to say no to their trafficking  for prostitution. The upper-caste gang in the neighbouring town heard about it and launched a caste war against these low-caste prostituted women. They came at night and burnt their huts, beat the men and raped one of the women 22 times. Their rationale was that it was the duty of certain low-caste women to be available for upper-caste men. These upper-caste men in turn work as petty criminals for organized gangs, recruiting and transporting girls from villages to the big cities.

The above example also illustrates the structural nature of demand. Demand is not an individualised phenomenon but is structured in caste, class and gender relations. These relations help to create and keep in place new kinds of demand which then in turn continue to fuel the trafficking industry.

In India Demand for trafficking has been expanded by the following industries:

• Pornography industry: The pornographic industry directly and indirectly has caused the expansion of demand. Directly it has led to the trafficking of young girls who are told they will be given a job in films, tricked and brought from small towns and villages, raped and filmed for pornographic videos. Indirectly, the demand for pornography has led to the mushrooming of pornography producing units in all cities and towns in India. The sex-industry has further legitimised pornography by advertising campaigns that make it acceptable to buy and use porn and commodify women and girls.

• The nexus between the Brothel-industry and the Pharmaceutical industry: Licensed brothel districts were started by the British in Mumbai and Kolkata and other big towns in the 19th C to provide disease free sex for soldiers and clerks in the service of the empire and have not just continued but expanded today. Old red light districts have expanded and new ones have mushroomed. Brothel managers buying trafficked girls have been hired by AIDS management organizations as peer workers who distribute condoms inside the brothels. Instead of being arrested these sex-entrepreneurs are now treated with impunity and continue to receive trafficked girls.

• Sex-Tourism industry: Many tourist agencies, hoteliers, guides and transporters advertise certain regions and resorts as sex sites to promote tourism. Goa, Kovalam, Darjeeling, Bombay, Leh, Kerala are just a few in a long list.

As long as the Demand expands, Providing services and instituting preventive mechanisms among those at risk to trafficking provides protection to pockets of vulnerable people but does not detract the traffickers and human smugglers. When increased vigilance and new laws prevented traffickers and smugglers from sourcing women and children from Nepal to Mumbai and Kolkata, they simply shifted their area of operations to Bihar, West Bengal, the hill states of the northeast and Jharkhand in India because a demand for trafficked women and children continued to exist. Apne Aap has been working for the last six years in these areas and we found that that the traffickers simply shifted districts and villages from the ones that Ape Aap focussed on. Since then Apne Aap has launched a campaign to confront the demand to trafficking with some success. We train police officers on prioritising the arrest of traffickers and end-users of trafficked sex, we work with prosecutors for increased convictions and our women’s cooperatives act s complainants and witnesses against traffickers. This has slowly begun to make a dent in the areas we work in. In Mumbai, after repated police raids and the sealing of brothels and arrest of traffickers, the brothel district has shrunk from forty thousand women to bout five thousand women. In Kolkata, where were work the number of new girls being brough in has come down and in Bihar whole communities have decided to become non-red light districts against all odds.

I would like add that ours has been a multi-sectoral approach-we have addressed the demand, provided legal protection those affected and at the same time created viable livelihood options for women through cooperateives based on local econmies and boarding schools for girls.

Both migration and trafficking are a supply and demand phenomenon. We have tried to look at development issues at the grassroots from access to justice for marginalized populations to education and livelihood options to the demand side where we have addressed the issue of prosecution and convictions of traffickers.

Our efforts are small and limited to pockets of women in ten red-light districts in India.

However, to really make a dent in the trafficking industry, issues of gender equality to address supply and demand will have to be addressed by the state which will also have to hold accountable non-state actors.

Addressing the demand for human trafficking, use of the law and its full implementation can only be done by states individually and in collaboration bi-laterally and multilaterally. It is urgent that the UN and its members take the leadership on this. Article 9, paragraph 5, of the UN protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children states that: “State Parties shall adopt or strengthen legislative or other measures, such as educational, social or cultural measues to including through bilateral or multi-lateral cooperation, to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children that leads to trafficking.”

Countries will have to strengthen their law-enforcement response to trafficking and work across borders to tackle the organized nature of the crime bringing traffickers and smugglers to book, confiscating the illegal assets created out of trafficking, making the traffickers and smugglers compensate for the damages and penalizing them. Very often traffickers and smugglers commit the crime in one country and jump across the border and have a bank account or residential status in another country.

An example is the Swedish government legislation passed and implemented in 1999 that stepped up measures against prostitution not only by directing strong penalties against pimps, brothel owners, and other sex industry entrepreneurs but by also directing criminal sanctions against customers.  (The law also eliminated penalties against prostitutes, such as the penalty for soliciting.)  After the passage of the new law, Sweden spearheaded a public education campaign warning sex industry customers that patronizing prostitutes was criminal behavior.  The result was unexpected.  Sex trafficking to Sweden has declined.   The danger of prosecution coupled with a diminished demand made Sweden an unpromising market for global sex traffickers and smugglers.  Based on the success of the Swedish model, country after country is following Sweden’s example-Norway, Korea, Lithuania, some cities in the Phillippines and New York state.

My own country India, is a signatory to the protocol and is in the process of amending its anti-trafficking law to penalize buyers of trafficked people and severely punish traffickers and smugglers.

The UN protocol has already laid out guidelines for this. While there is increased cooperation for the repatriation of victims of trafficking, we need more cooperating and collaboration between law-enforcement agencies to investigate arrest and prosecute traffickers and smugglers and those who buy trafficked people.

Thank you,

Ruchira Gupta